Contrasts abound as Doyel challenges Stargel for Fla. Senate

Gary White @garywhite13

Saturday

Oct 20, 2018 at 5:53 PMOct 21, 2018 at 12:21 PM

LAKELAND — Voters couldn't ask for a clearer contrast between the two candidates in the Florida Senate District 22 race.

Challenger Bob Doyel, a Democrat from Winter Haven, criticizes the stances and actions of Republican incumbent Kelli Stargel of Lakeland on nearly every major issue. Stargel says Doyel's policies would endanger progress the Republican-led Florida Legislature has made on the economy, education and other issues.

District 22 includes roughly the northern half of Polk County and a southern section of Lake County.

Stargel, 52, has been in the Legislature since 2008 and in the Senate since 2012. A married mother of five, she works as an investment property manager for a family business. A sixth-generation Floridian, she attended Tallahassee Community College.

Doyel, 73, is a retired circuit court judge and a married father of two grown children. He is a former Naval officer who served in the Vietnam War. He is the only Democratic candidate in Polk County to have been endorsed by former President Barack Obama.

Why does Stargel think voters should return her to office?

“I think if you look at the direction the state of Florida is going in, it's a positive direction and it's because of the work we've been doing in Tallahassee,” she said. “And I want to continue to do that work, so I hope I earned their support.”

Doyel's campaign emphasizes his personal history. The youngest of 10 children, he said he was raised by a single mother in Oklahoma, and his first home had no electricity or running water.

Doyel said a high school guidance counselor insisted he apply to college and intervened to get him a scholarship. He went on to earn three advanced degrees.

It's that background that fuels Doyel's commitment to supporting public education, he said.

“That's my motivation because Kelli Stargel, on the other hand, has done great damage to our public schools, and I want to be a countervailing force to that,” Doyel said. “She has also been a moving force in getting public funds for vouchers for private schools, and just about any excuse can be the basis for, 'Let's have a new statute so somebody can use public tax money to pay private schools'."

Stargel answers that the Legislature's push toward giving students more freedom to choose a school improves the level of education for all.

“It's one of the big differences in our ideologies,” Stargel said. “I believe that education needs to be focused around the student and the majority of the choices need to be made by the parents. He supports public schools and wants all the money to go to public schools and remove all these choice options. If that's done, then those options and those choices are only available to the rich.”

Doyel also criticizes Stargel and other Republicans for what he says is too much emphasis on standardized testing.

“Just about anybody who has kids would tell you there's just too much testing,” Doyel said. “I know some people have told me about their kids throwing up in the morning when they're going to school because they have those standardized tests. And teachers want to be innovative, want to be creative ... but they're so constrained by the requirements of teaching to the test, that that's what they do.”

Stargel said the state has cut standardized testing in response to complaints from school boards. She said she doesn't see a need for further reductions.

Doyel accuses Stargel and other Republican legislators of robbing cities and counties of authority to control. He pointed to disputes between county commissioners and the Polk County legislative delegation that led to the canceling of an annual gathering in Tallahassee.

“To me, it's just a common-sense issue that doesn't have a party tag to it that we ought to let our local officials run our local governments without infringement by people in Tallahassee who don't know what goes on in Polk County and in Lake County,” he said.

The challenger also said Stargel and legislative leaders have burdened county governments and school boards with “unfunded mandates.” He cited a measure adopted this year in reaction to the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, requiring armed guards at schools, and said the Legislature didn't provide enough money to cover the costs to counties.

Stargel said most of the friction with county commissioners seemed related to a constitutional amendment the Legislature initiated that would raise the homestead exemption on property taxes to $75,000 total. County Commissioner George Lindsey has said that if passed the measure would cause a revenue drop of $8 million for the county, leading to cuts in services.

“I believe property values are going up in the state of Florida, but salaries at this point have not gone up at the same level,” Stargel said. “We need to be cognizant of that, so we put it on the ballot so people could decide if they wanted to have an additional homestead exemption.”

Stargel added that she pushed to get $15 million in funding in this year's state budget for a 5-mile extension of the Polk Parkway, which she said was the top priority of county officials.

The two candidates differ on other issues as well: Doyel favors repealing the state's Stand Your Ground law, which Stargel supported. She said she sees no need to revise the law.

Doyel said the Legislature has ignored the will of voters who overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment in 2014 to dedicate $750 million a year for acquiring conservation land. The Legislature has directed much of the funding each year toward routine operating expenses of state agencies.

Stargel said the Legislature has properly used the environmental funding and that Florida already owns more land than it can manage.

Doyel, a supporter of Planned Parenthood, faults the incumbent for sponsoring or supporting bills that critics say are aimed at making it harder for clinics that offer abortions to operate or creating burdens for women seeking abortions. Among those are bills to impose a 24-hour waiting period for abortions and requiring all doctors who work at such clinics to have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

Courts have struck down the waiting-period law and some other abortion laws passed in recent years as unconstitutional.

“The right to have an abortion is legal; we just want to make sure that it's safe,” Stargel said. “Abortion clinics were not even (subject) to the same standards as other health clinics, so we're treating them the way we treat other health clinics.”

Doyel said Stargel's claim that such laws are intended to protect women's health is “utter nonsense.”

During the campaign, Doyel has played up his career of public service. He said he could have made much more money by joining a big law firm, but he chose to be a university professor, a lawyer representing indigent defendants and finally a judge.

“My whole career has been focused on helping people and not on making money,” Doyel said. “My focus is on human beings, and the Legislature in the past 20 years, at least, including during Kelli Stargel's tenure, their focus has been on special interests and corporations.”

Stargel said Florida has prospered under the policies of the Republican-led Legislature. For example, she said tax cuts have returned $10 billion to Floridians in the past decade.

If given a final Senate term, Stargel said, she would be “continuing on the course we've been on in the state of Florida that's giving us a triple-A bond rating and made it the state everybody is moving to as opposed to away from, continuing to keep taxes low, continuing to provide quality education, support our industries — Florida agriculture, tourism, the things that are keeping Florida strong.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.

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